The case for the thick wall
Thin, layered construction is efficient on a spreadsheet and fragile in a building's second half-century. A note on mass, repair and the things a wall can do when it is allowed to be deep.
A wall built as a single material can be cut into, patched, re-plastered and drilled by one trade with one set of skills. A wall built as six layers cannot: every repair is an act of archaeology, and the person doing it usually cannot see what they are cutting.
Depth also buys spatial goods that no layered wall provides. A window reveal of four hundred millimetres becomes a seat, a shelf, a shading device and a thermal buffer at once, without a single additional component being specified.
None of this is an argument against performance. It is an argument for locating performance in the part of the assembly that can be maintained, and for treating the lifespan of a detail as a design criterion alongside its U-value.